More pondering on those pedestrian crossing lights

The pedestrian crossing lights at South Flores and West Commerce streets are permanent.

My ambivalence toward the newly-installed pedestrian crossing lights (the ones which allow people to cross intersections diagonally) comes from a kind of knee-jerk disdain I’m suppose to have as a journalist toward change brought on by a taxing entity.

On one hand, it’s convenient to be able to get to the other corner so quickly. On the other hand, I don’t know if they’re much of a necessity at some intersections.

The city identified a “high volume of pedestrian traffic” at 14 intersections in the central business district. The first set of lights was installed at South Flores and West Commerce streets last year. The other 13 were put in last month.

Where they make the most sense is where they will remain permanent fixtures  three intersections near City Hall, the Municipal Plaza Building, the Bexar County Courthouse and the Bexar County Justice Center. They are South Flores and West Commerce, South Flores and Dolorosa and South Flores and East Nueva.

The other 11 will undergo an observation period of 30 days (or so) to determine their effectiveness, according to Majed Al-Ghafry, director of the city’s Public Works department. If kept, parallel white lines will be painted on the street.

“What we’re trying to do is make downtown pedestrian friendly,” Al-Ghafry said.

What I really wanted to know. . . OK, so there’s a high volume of foot traffic. But how does one determine this?

The area around the aforementioned government nerve center is a no-brainer because a lot of people walk that area. But some of the intersections didn’t compute, North St. Mary’s and East Travis streets as one example.

Al-Ghafry explained that there was no study conducted to come to these “high pedestrian traffic” conclusions. No hard data, but rather it was all done through general observation (eye-balling), which is the same method I used to reach my conclusions about the necessity of the lights in specific areas of downtown.

It’s refreshing to think Public Works didn’t waste money on a study. But I can’t help but think some of the money spent on the lights and their installation (approximately $5,000 per intersection) could have been saved had there been some paperwork to say “don’t bother” at North St. Mary’s and East Travis streets. To determine which approach is more fiscally responsible, we would need to know the cost of the study, for which I have no idea.

In a previous post on this subject, a reader who goes by Downtown Resident, argued that what the lights do is constrict traffic flow resulting in gridlock.

“That’s a very smart and valid observation,” Al-Ghafry said, adding that not all of the sets of lights will remain. The set at Navarro and East Commerce streets, for example, are not likely to stick.

The whole question of “Who gets to go when?” and the workarounds (i.e. jaywalking) gets messy with the new lights. A fairly simplistic traffic/pedestrian pattern was replaced by this more complex system, the mathematics of which I’m still getting used to. Kind of like when somebody sprays ants with Raid and they start to walk funny along their paths.

It used to be, when traffic lights turned green, the pedestrian lights would indicate it’s safe to walk and people and vehicles were allowed to travel in the same direction. As a pedestrian, you would have to look over your shoulder to make sure a car wasn’t turning into the crosswalk, like a quarterback freezing a defensive back with a shoulder pump.

For some reason (idiocy), many drivers are not aware of, or perhaps more accurately… they ignore, the pedestrian-has-the-right-of-way truth and would try to intimidate the crosser by inching closer to them. These new lights are supposed to limit this kind of human vs. vehicle showdown by red-handing the pedestrian as to allow vehicles to make their turns. The payoff for the pedestrian is that, when it’s their turn, they may cross diagonally.

It’s all very complex, especially when you factor in one-ways and intersections that make a “T”  every set of lights is different.

As a former colleague pointed out, these lights make it harder to jaywalk, which I do quite often.

The only instance when I do not jaywalk is when there are parents with little kids paused at the curb waiting for the pixelated Walking Man to appear. As tempting as it is to cross in these situations, especially when there are no vehicles for miles, you can tell the situation is a teaching moment for the parent and the last thing I want to do is sabotage the lesson by disobeying the rules.

What do you think of the new lights, from both the perspective of a pedestrian and a motorist?